Perhaps, not widely known by PC users, there is an option to boot from a USB drive within a running Windows OS installation. If Fast Boot is enabled in UEFI/BIOS, you may not be able to boot from ...
You don't need to throw away an old laptop. By installing ChromeOS Flex on it, you can turn it into a Chromebook, instead.
If you use Windows, it is always a good idea to have a Windows 11 or Windows 10 Bootable USB around. My new Windows setup crashed, and I had no way to use Advanced Recovery. So I had two options ...